Report bands

Band types

The Report Designer supports the following band types.

Detail band

The central part of a report. Unlike other report bands, you cannot delete this band - the present report structure includes the Detail band in its core. The contents of the Detail band are repeated for every data entry. If you're building a report listing, say, employees, it will be rendered for each employee in the database.

Group Header and Footer

The Group Header and Group Footer bands are shown above and below each group.

You may use the Group Header bands for grouping by multiple data fields in one of the following ways:

• Add several Group Header bands. Specify one group field for each of these bands. This results in nested grouping of the report's data.
• Specify several group fields for the Group Fields property of the Group Header band. The data will be grouped by certain combinations of field values.

The Group Footer band is unnecessary without the corresponding Group Header band. When present, it allows customization by providing a set of properties similar to those of the Group Header.

For more information, see Changing or applying data grouping to a report.

Report Header and Footer

The Report Header and Report Footer are the only types of report bands rendered once per report.

• The Report Header is the first band of a report on the first page, not counting margins as they are "out-of-page" zones. The Report Header precedes even the Page Header band. It is the best place for the report name, company logo, date of creation, author name and miscellaneous information. If you plan to add a chart that visualizes the report's data, then drop the Chart control onto this band.
• The Report Footer finalizes the informative part of the report. It is placed before the Page Footer and Bottom Margin bands on the last page of the report. Use the Report Footer for report grand totals or conclusions.

Page Header and Footer

The Page Header and Page Footer bands are located at the top and bottom of every page in a report.

The Page Header/Footer bands are the best place for information that should be printed on every page. For example, use them to display the header of a table which is continued from the previous page.

If you insert page break right after the Report Header (by setting its Page Break property value to After the Band), the Page Footer and Page Header bands will not be printed on the first page.

Page Margin bands

The Top Margin and Bottom Margin bands represent the top and bottom page margins. They are intended for displaying page numbers, or some sort of supplementary information (for example, current system time or the user name).

Managing bands

You can manage a report's bands using the Report Editor, which may be invoked either through the Edit and Reorder Bands context link of a report's Smart tag actions list or through any band's Smart tag.

The Report Editor allows you to easily add, remove and reorder a report's bands, and to define their properties.

Another way to add a band of a certain type to a report is to invoke the context menu by right-clicking anywhere on a report's surface. Then on the shortcut menu, point to Insert Band, and then click the appropriate band on the submenu.